Any advice for a new guy?

I've been working with live sound production at my church and at concerts for quite awhile now, and have done a little recording at home. Well now my band has been asked to be on a compilation cd that is being made by a local record label and we want to record some new stuff. This will be our first time to record with some actual equipment by ourselves, and I want any advice you have to offer. We will be using one of the newer 12 channel Peavey mixers and Cakewalk Guitar Tracks Pro 2. We have some good mics for the vocals and drums and all that stuff. One big question I have is how should we go about recording the guitars and bass? Should we mic cabs or just run from the pedalboard into the mixer? Thanks and God bless.

While it usually depends on musical style and the artist's desired sound, the most common procedure so far as I know is to mike the guitar and DI the bass. Since I'm a bass player, however, when I play engineer I generally mike the bass amp, as well as take a channel direct. I carefully crafted my tone, I want to sound like me on an album, ya know? But standard practice is to take the bass di, and that sounds fine most of the time. If you want my advice, try it both ways, and throw out what doesn't sound good-- DAW's are really forgiving about that, and with Guitar Tracks you should have enough tracks to record a couple things you might not use later. Are you recording live or multitracking?

Based on your questions it's obvious you have little or no experience with digital or any other method of recording. Hire an experienced engineer to record and work with you, or you may find that your stuff won't make that CD, and chances are you'll be very discouraged.

That's probably not what you wanted to hear but i have some experience in this area.

Based on your questions it's obvious you have little or no experience with digital or any other method of recording. Hire an experienced engineer to record and work with you, or you may find that your stuff won't make that CD, and chances are you'll be very discouraged.

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I'm sorry, I hate to say anything possibly offensive, but that's a load of dingo's kidneys. Even though a professional can get better results, A) it's a local label, and likely won't be too picky about recording quality, B) the faster you learn the art of recording, the better off you'll be when you DO hire someone to record you. Just do it, and put in the time to make it sound as good as you can--you'd be surprised what diving in, being determined, experimenting and USING YOUR EARS can do. Good luck.

I will try to mic the amp and run a DI and see which I like better, since Guitar Tracks has 24 channels on it and I can throw out what I don't want. As for hiring someone, yeah we could, I even know 2 very experienced studio guys(one recorded Zao and has done all of our previous stuff, and the other has done many local bands) but I wanted to do this on my own. We have a sure spot on the comp. cd and a little over a month to get the song to them which gives us plenty of time to get it right. Thanks and God bless.

the better off you'll be when you DO hire someone to record you. Just do it, and put in the time to make it sound as good as you can--you'd be surprised what diving in, being determined, experimenting and USING YOUR EARS can do. Good luck.[/QUOTE]

I do respect your thoughts here and should have made a point or two more clear.

When I first started to track I did try it on my own. I worked many hard hours trying to get it done. No regrets here.

But................

I learned more in one session from a professional than I did trying to get everything right on my own. I'm not saying don't dive in and use your ears and go for it and all that. I'm a go for it kind of guy. I should have clarified that I would reccommend if possible get in front of someone who really know's what they're doing. Because of that My band without question had the best sounding track on a compilation CD in a very similar situation. This was many years ago, but I'll never forget how working with that person propelled my ability in the sound room. My experience may not be the same as yours, but going in the reverse order advanced my abilities much faster than if I had continued to work on my own. Knowledge is power. Any time you can get some from an expert, grab it.

Today we recorded 6 songs of just drums and then added most of the guitar to one. It's sounding really good right now, I think it sounds better than the last stuff we recorded, and we're taking lots of time to eq everything exactly the way we want it. This week one of the guitarists is on spring break, so we'll probably do all his stuff this week and next week our other guitarist and myself are on spring break so we'll get our stuff done then. As soon as we get some stuff finished, I'll put a new song on our Purevolume site and you guys can check it out.

Initial recommendations are: always mic the guitar amp (never record the guitar direct), and, always parallel the bass with a mic and a "direct" path (either straight through the board, or via a DI). Kick drum mics and large diaphragm condensers or dynamics seem to work well for bass. A '57 is perfectly adequate for guitar.